


Blood, Breath

by Caelum_Blue



Series: Kataang Week 2020 [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Airbending & Airbenders, Bloodbending (Avatar), Conversations, Episode: s03e08 The Puppetmaster, Gen, Healing, Kataang Week 2020, Waterbending & Waterbenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25597555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caelum_Blue/pseuds/Caelum_Blue
Summary: Written for Kataang Week 2020. Prompt - Blood/Wounds.Katara's still reeling after learning about bloodbending. Aang tries to help.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar)
Series: Kataang Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851361
Comments: 18
Kudos: 83





	Blood, Breath

**Author's Note:**

> I dithered over how to tag this one. I know it's Kataang Week but so many of my fics are gen, and this one has no overt romance cuz we're still in the middle of Book 3. So I tagged it as & instead of /, because there might be people out there who just want to find gen Aang & Katara friendship, and I think this would fit the bill nicely.
> 
> ANYWAY, this one's gonna have discussion of how bending can kill people and allusions to death and stuff, just fyi.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Teach me how to heal?”

Katara blinked a few times and looked up at him. It took her a few seconds to focus on his face. “What?”

“Teach me how to heal,” Aang said again, and then he added, “please.”

She blinked again. “Why?”

_ Because you cried for hours last night. Because you kept apologizing to Yue. Because your hopes were completely shattered. Because I know how badly you wanted to learn Southern-style waterbending. Because one of your greatest heroes turned out to be the worst kind of villain. Because you’ve been staring at a field of fire lilies all afternoon. _ “You taught me how to fight...for obvious reasons. But...I know I’d prefer healing over fighting. And...I think we both could use it.”

Katara graced him with a weak smile. “Okay,” she said, straightening up. She already looked better at the prospect of a goal - a mission, something to make the world a better place. “Give me your arm.”

Sokka and Toph left them to it and stuck to the other side of their campsite, Sokka drawing out diagrams for sky bison armor while rattling off ideas, and Toph practicing her metalbending and telling Sokka that, as much as her skills were progressing, she would not be able to created mounted arrow-launchers, nor would they be able to train Momo to use them in time.

Katara spent the better part of an hour tracing her finger up and down her and Aang’s bodies, talking about the twelve standard meridians and chi flow and applying waterbending as a conduit. Aang soaked the information up like a sponge, watched Katara sink her focus into healing, and all the ways you could fix a person.

But eventually her words trailed off halfway through an explanation of how waterbending could keep a person’s heart beating, and she stared at her fingers hovering over Aang’s chest. “It’s...not so different, is it?” she whispered.

Aang took her hand in his. “It’s  _ very _ different, Katara.”

She shook her head. “I just...can’t believe someone would use waterbending for something so  _ evil.” _

“I know,” Aang said gently. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s - we’re supposed to be  _ better _ than the Fire Nation. Waterbending  _ isn’t _ evil, it’s  _ good.” _

“No bending is good or evil,” Aang said. “It just...is.”

“I’ve never seen firebending used for good,” Katara said dryly.

“Kuzon used to make shapes with it,” Aang shrugged. “People, animals. They’d dance around the campfire. It was cute.”

She looked unconvinced.

“Anyone who knows enough about the human body to heal it is also going to know how to hurt it,” Aang said. “Bending is just an ability, it doesn’t have morals. What’s good and evil is people’s choices on how to use it.”

Katara sighed. “I guess I’m just...so used to the idea of fire being the element that causes pain,” she said. “I never thought water…”

Aang hesitated - but she looked so lost, and she’d cried so much last night, and he cared about her  _ so much. _ He glanced towards Sokka and Toph, saw they were still engrossed in their own conversation, hopefully far enough away that Toph’s hearing wouldn’t pick anything up. He leaned closer to Katara and said, very quietly but all in a rush, “Airbending can be used to suck the breath right out of someone’s lungs.”

It took a moment for it to sink in, but when it did she stared at him, horrified.  _ “...What?” _

Aang hunched his shoulders a bit. “Yeah.”

“You can - ”

_ “I _ can’t,” he said immediately. “That’s - it’s  _ forbidden, _ and even if it wasn’t I wouldn’t want to know how! But it’s...definitely possible. There were old stories. Legends.” 

She took another moment to process it. “That’s... _ awful, _ Aang.”

“Yeah,” he said, and with a rueful grin added, “there’s reasons why we’re pacifists.”  _ If you listen hard enough you can hear every living thing breathing together, _ Hue had said, back under the banyan-grove tree. The old Swampbender had no idea how true that had been for Air Nomads. 

“I’d never heard that about Airbenders,” Katara said.

“It’s not like it was common knowledge,” Aang shrugged. “We didn’t even talk about it amongst ourselves much. I don’t think anyone even actually knew how to do it, just that it was possible.” Maybe a skilled master could have figured it out on their own, but none of them would ever have attempted it. And now there was definitely no one who knew how to do it - maybe no one who even knew it was possible, if Katara’s reaction was anything to go by. 

If Aang never said anything about it, maybe no one would ever know again. 

Aang had been grieving the loss of his people and the destruction of his culture for months, but if the knowledge of the asphyxiation technique disappeared, it would be one loss he wouldn’t mourn.

“Even knowing it’s  _ possible _ is scary,” said Katara, who’d bloodbended a whole human fifteen minutes after learning the technique was possible.

“But we didn’t, Katara. We could, but we  _ didn’t. _ It’s not the power that’s evil, it’s the choices you make in how to use it.”

Katara mulled it over. Eventually, she nodded, and they spent a long, silent moment gazing out over the field of fire lilies. The flowers were just as red and beautiful as they’d been in another field, several islands behind them now. Katara held a hand over the nearest flower, slowly moving her wrist and her fingers, and the lily’s petals opened and closed a few times, it’s leaves shifting in slow wavy motions. 

It didn’t whither or dehydrate under her hand, but when she released it, the lily suddenly fell limp to the ground, unable to stand upright anymore, leaves and petals haphazardly splayed. Katara blinked. “I...must have hurt it somehow,” she realized, frowning. “Maybe I burst something inside.”

“It’s okay,” Aang said quickly. “It’s not like you bend plants much.”

“...Yeah,” Katara said after a moment. “You’re right, I don’t.”

_ At least it wasn’t a person, _ Aang didn’t say, because now was  _ not _ the time to bring that up.

“They’re just flowers,” Katara said quietly. Sadly. She stared out at the fire lilies again. The field looked like a massive army of little red soldiers.

They were quiet again, for a little while. On the other side of the camp, Toph was telling Sokka that two horns was enough for Appa and they didn’t need to give him any more on his helmet no matter how cool he claimed it would look. It would not look cool, it would look stupid. She didn’t know much about looks but she knew for a fact she would be able to  _ feel _ the stupid.

Finally, Katara sighed. “She didn’t even teach me any actual Southern-style waterbending.”

Aang wrapped an arm around her shoulders and thought of the way the nuns raised at the Western Air Temple had been able to walk around on the ceiling, perfectly upside-down with the rest of their home, how they’d laugh at anyone who attempted to mimic them, and how jealously they’d guarded that unique art. “I’m sorry, Katara.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are appreciated.
> 
> Meridians are the paths chi flows through in the body, according to traditional Chinese medicine. I think when Katara attends that healing lesson, the dummy Yugoda is demonstrating on has the meridians carved into it. Also why did no one ever teach Aang healing I think he would've loved it and also I think healing deserves a bit more in-depth exploration as an art. The fantasy genre tends to just treat healing as another thing in the characters' bag of tricks and I'm getting tired of it.
> 
> Also I've spent all these years wondering "how did Sokka manage to make armor for Appa they didn't have a forge and we just see him working on it like once but it didn't make sense" and while I was writing this I was like "oh wait Toph can metalbend, duh."
> 
> It seriously kills me that Hama doesn't seem to have actually taught Katara any _actual_ Southern Water Tribe techniques. Everything they talked about had to do with Hama learning to survive in the Fire Nation and pulling water from unconventional sources. No moves, techniques, or philosophies. So sad.
> 
> Also I kinda headcanon that Hama died very shortly after her arrest of either an aneurysm or a heart attack or something. It was Katara's first time bloodbending and she was under a lot of stress. :( I also don't think that the Gaang is aware of this - I think they high-tailed it out of Hama's village immediately. A bunch of disappeared villagers return home in the middle of the night with the old innkeeper in chains saying she's a witch who controlled them somehow and these strange kids saved them? That would probably launch an investigation, or at the very least a lot of questions, and no one knows Hama and Katara are Waterbenders. Bad enough some of the prisoners probably saw Toph bending her space rock into a key. The Gaang wasn't gonna wait around for someone to poke around the inn and find a flying bison.
> 
> Regarding asphyxiation, unfortunately for Aang, there actually is surviving literature regarding that old Airbender tale - a few mentions in anthropological texts, a few recorded bits of folklore, and some Sozin-era anti-Air Nomad propaganda. Fortunately, these records are really only known in academic circles, and even there it's pretty obscure knowledge. So just as long as no well-read martial arts experts with a deep appreciation/obsession over Air Nomad culture suddenly obtain airbending abilities, the knowledge of asphyixiation techniques is safely unusable! :D *cough*gdiZaheer*coughcough*


End file.
